Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 5

[ecosophia]

The semi-open posts  I've hosted here on the Covid-19 narrative, the inadequately tested experimental drugs for it, and the whole cascading mess surrounding them have continued to field a huge number of comments, so I'm opening another space for discussion. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 

3. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 

Comments

[open_space]

I've been looking for ways to cheer me up and following along the lines of not succumbing to fear I found this poem that I liked and thought of sharing it here:

Invictus
BY William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

[temporaryreality]

Thank you! I hadn't thought of that poem in a long time and am adding it to my book of collected poems.

[open_space]

You are welcome! I definitely needed it though I think a little bit of hope would be good too, which came from a scene of a movie.

I had no idea it was a classic, not having being raised in an English speaking country, it was just the first that turned up in my search. It seems it was part of Dead Poets Society (the book version of the movie) and it turns out one of the poems of Vachel Lindsay appears there too whom I had mentioned earlier so I thought of sharing it here. The movie I thought was amazing when I was a kid and it showed me just how vast intellectual pursuits have been in the past and how alive going out of the rigid dogmatism can be when they go out to a cave at night to recite poetry.

One of the opening scenes the professor asks one of the students to read the introduction of a book on poetry that describes how to grade the value of a poem as the area of the graph made by plotting its "importance" versus its "perfection". In the same way modern society tries to box life and check boxes, measure performance and stifle the Life within us all.

"As you proceed through the poetry in this book practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this manner grows so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry. --Excrement-- The professor says. --That is what I think of John Evans Pritchard PhD. We are not laying pipe here we are talking about poetry. Gentleman, I want you to rip that page-- The students look excited and fearful one another as someone starts ripping. --Rip it out. I don't hear enough rip! Keep ripping gentleman, the whole introduction. This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls. Armies of academics going forward measuring poetry. No! We will not have that here. You will learn to think for yourselves again, you will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world--"

I think we need a lot of that and fortunately there is a lot of that here.

[tamanous2020]

Thanks for sharing open_space, that is an eternal classic. One more poem to add, a favorite that might be of comfort by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll see your whiny Welshman and raise you Tennyson's Ulysses:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use,
As though to breathe were life! Life upon life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself
And this gray spirit yearning with desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought...
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods...

[(Anonymous)]

To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield

That last bit is important now

[(Anonymous)]

To strive, to seek, not the reverse, I think

-Umber Gaseous Nit-Picker

[open_space]

Thank you tamanous and the commenter below for the extra poetry.

[(Anonymous)]

That’s a poem that’ll always cheer you up!

—Lady Cutekitten

[(Anonymous)]

I meant “Invictus,” a couple of other poems got posted in between “Invictus” and my comment.

—Lady Cutekitten

[open_space]

It did for me! It thought it was appropriate too, but they'll never get me.